Ashes to Ashes
by Shadow over Egypt
Summary: He was always very much the weird one, the one no-one could ever understand. Genius can come from the strangest of beginnings, but not all genius has to be of the friendly sort. From his birth to his death, L always 'was' an antisocial brat.
1. Bird of Fire

**Shadow: **This was an oneshot idea, originally. And then it morphed, and grew horns and wings and a spiky tail, and became a nasty little demon with a pitchfork in the corner of my mind gleefully poking me at every available opportunity. So I caved, and started writing it.

_**Note:**_ This is going to be as in-universe as I can possibly make it, and it takes information from both the original _Death Note _manga and anime, as well as the _Death Note: Another Note _novel. Obviously, there will be spoilers for key things from both abounding from the offset, so don't read if that's going to bother you.

Much love to Compy, Kelpy and 'Kari, without whom this plot would still be sort of wandering about in dejected little circles.

_**Disclaimer:**_ _Death Note _belongs not to me (much as I wish otherwise), but to its amazing creator, Tsugumi Obha - without whom this fandom would (obviously) not exist-, and its just-as-wonderful artist, Takeshi Obata – who deserves a whole heap of credit for giving us such pretty bishōnen to squee over, love, adore, and (in some cases) molest. Credit also to the writer Nisio Isin (nice palindrome of a name, that), who wrote the _Death Note: Another Note _novel – which I have yet to read (-mutters-) but am taking guidance from regardless. (It's handy having a lot of friends who like DN just as much as you do. X3)

* * *

**Ashes to Ashes**

**1. **_**Bird of Fire**_

_The phoenix dies in flames, and rises from ashes. When the old bird dies a new hatchling springs to life, as glorious and as wonderful as the last._

_The phoenix is immortal._

_There is only ever one phoenix._

* * *

"I can't take it anymore; I quit."

Carefully, Arthur Edgenson, Director of _Close Haven_ – a mixed-gender, state-run orphanage for children up to the age of sixteen –, placed his pen down upon his desk, adopting an expression of calmness to face the flustered woman who had just burst into his office.

"Dora -"

"Don't you _'Dora', _me!" Temper flaring 'Dora' stepped forwards, slamming her hands down onto polished wood. Edgenson's pen jumped into the air at the action, rattling on the oak as it came down again once more. "I've had enough!"

"Dora," Arthur adjusted his tie, forcing his eyes up to lock with the gaze of the distressed Dora, "this is the third time you've 'quit' in as many weeks."

"I _mean _it this time!"

Quietly: "That's what you said the _other _two times…"

Dora…_deflated_ at the comment, collapsing into the chair opposite the orphanage director. "It's…" the woman searched for words, "I love working with children, you know that." Her employer nodded, wisely choosing to remain silent and let the other speak. "I love helping them, watching them grow up, _loving _them I suppose – and god knows the kids that come here could _easily _do with a bit more love -, but…but that _child-!" _Dora looked up, anguished. "He defies everything we throw at him – warmth, kindness, gentleness, punishment, anger…he's…_oblivious _to it all! Milly left a few months ago because of him and you stuck him in my care, and I just_ can't deal with him."_ When Arthur looked like he was going to utter something in her charge's defence, Dora snapped at him. "That child is a _nightmare, _and you know it!"

"Dora…" facing down glaring eyes, Arthur sighed. "Please don't quit. I'll call the boy in; see if we can reach some sort of compromise with him."

"_Do _so!"

* * *

He was an anomaly within the system. No true record of his life began until after he reached the monumental age of three-and-three-quarters – any details from before that date were sketchy, at best.

No-one was really sure of his name. His surname was 'Lawliet' from his mother – the father was unidentified. Some old women that had lived around the child's old home had said the mother, who had kept herself to herself and never offered anything to them _but _her last name, had been married – she had worn a ring on her finger, anyhow. No man had ever been seen entering or leaving the Lawliet house. Those same old women had been the ones to give the child his forename – 'Elle'. It was more a nickname than anything else – the mother had been French, apparently it had been easy to distinguish the foreign inflections in her accent – and, having never been personally introduced to the child up-close, most of the neighbours had assumed it was a girl due to the child's slight build, and unkempt hair.

'Elle' was French for 'she'.

The Lawliet woman was never even reported missing. Most of those around the Lawliet home had noticed that neither woman nor child had appeared for a few weeks, but everyone merely assumed that they'd simply upped and moved away. The alarm was only eventually raised after a next-door neighbour, complaining about 'a strange smell' that seeped through the thin walls of her house from the Lawliets', called in the local Council to investigate. The local Council, with their usual abysmal reactionary time, turned up another week and a half later and broke the Lawliets' front door down when no-one answered their tentative knocks.

It turned out the 'strange smell' was putrefaction setting in to the Lawliet woman's corpse. A rotting wound to the abdomen explained how the female had died; the coroner ruling the death as 'murder', there being no sign of the weapon used to inflict the wound anywhere in the house. The time of death was impossible to tell, and identification was impossible due to the extent of the decay. The murder case remained open, hanging uncomfortably over the local neighbourhood's head.

The child was discovered locked in his bedroom, curled up comatose amongst his sheets. Too weak to try and force the door open, too small to reach the window and call for help, 'Elle' had passed out from malnutrition, and dehydration. The paramedics rushing the child to hospital said it was a wonder the boy was still alive – he must've had food and liquid of some kind in his room to still be breathing, rationed and consumed within the early days of his mother's death, and his own imprisonment.

The British social services didn't know _what _to do with him. 'Elle', when he awoke, was understandably distraught when he was told he could not see his mother again, and screamed and kicked and _clawed _the nurses that tried to hold him down in the hospital where he was staying for his recovery. The toddler sobbed and _cried_, and refused any and all coddling offered to him. A small toy rabbit presented to him 'for comfort' was ripped to shreds, the stuffing scattered over the ward's floor and the empty skin thrown in amongst the waste in the bin. When the police came, and the social workers, he refused to speak to them, dark-eyed and sullen from under his long fringe. Child psychologists were sent in as he was clearly suffering trauma, but he yelled and threw things at them on his 'bad' days and ignored them completely on his 'good'.

He was taken into care, and sent to a local foster-family that had a good history for dealing with 'troubled' children. There…he mellowed out a little, coaxed into some semblance of calmness with cake and sweet things. There they discovered his innate intelligence, 'Elle' rushing through the family's collection of books, many of the works far beyond his supposed level. Quite stunned his foster-father bent down to try and hold a discussion with him – but 'Elle' clammed up, and refused to speak no matter what he was bribed with.

When they took him away from the foster-family, 'Elle' went silently, trailing down the garden path of the house he had stayed in for four months after the social worker who had come to fetch him.

He turned four in an orphanage, and his birthday present was a name.

It was decided 'Elle' was too feminine for a boy…but 'Elle' refused to be called anything _but _'Elle' – so they changed the spelling. 'Elle' became 'L', and L Lawliet was now four, orphaned, and in a state-run institution.

He lasted there barely two months before they moved him on.

* * *

L Lawliet was five-and-a-half, and had been through seven orphanages up and down the British Isles. The longest he had ever stayed in one establishment had been five months, two weeks and a day, and the shortest had been six _hours, _the boy having systematically smashed four windows with large stones and pushed another child down a short set of stairs – the girl had broken her wrist. When later asked why he had done such a thing L had only turned sullenly away, small fists clenched and expression hurt.

He was moved to _Close Haven, _quickly gaining a reputation for himself. L was utterly, _utterly _unsociable. He _hated _playing with other children, communing with them, even _talking _to them – when forced, by necessity, his words were short and sharp, and usually hurtful. When other children approached _him _he bamboozled them by speaking in pretty, glib French he said he'd learned from his mother, taking malicious joy in the confusion on the other's face. Care-workers who overheard him tried to stop that trick, to get L to return to the English he was so proficient in as well, but L claimed it was 'only a natural instinct' to return to speaking his 'native tongue' when accosted. The workers, somewhat spooked by such large words from such a young child, tried to keep away from him.

L avoided going outdoors, if he could help it. At playtimes he camped himself in the orphanage library, pulled down a book and began to read – usually from the teenage section, or non-fiction. His scowl often sent the other children scurrying away – even the ones ten years or so his senior. L pored over newspapers, tabloids and broadsheets alike, and seemed both fascinated and repulsed with what he read and saw. While others his age watched cartoons L watched documentaries and news reports, occasionally straying into adult drama when the television had already been monopolised by someone older than himself.

Like the poor doomed rabbit he had been given some years previously L was destructive towards toys, reaching into the communal box at _Close Haven _and systematically taking toy after toy apart. He was sent to his room for that on more than one occasion, but the boy only shrugged and said he had been 'learning'.

Three care-workers had been placed in charge of L since he had first arrived at the orphanage, with Dora being his fourth. The first two, Lucy and Marcus, had demanded the boy be passed onto another worker, or they'd resign. The third, Milly, _had _actually resigned, handing in her notice a few months previously and practically _running _out of the door to get away from what she called 'that _demon_ child!' And now Dora, it appeared, was doing no better at dealing with L than her predecessors.

Arthur Edgenson looked over his polished oak desk, and studied the small boy swinging his legs on the too-high chair directly opposite him. The child had dark, dark eyes, wide and round like an owl's. His fair skin only enhanced the enormity of his onyx-black gaze, the white baggy t-shirt the boy insisted on wearing practically falling off of one pale-as-milk shoulder. His hair, sooty black and all fluffed up like feathers, fell helplessly into his eyes, defying the hairbrush Edgenson knew it was routinely attacked with, much to L's dismay. The child was a strange one, but no weirder than many of the others that had come and gone before him.

"How old are you?" Arthur suddenly demanded of the boy.

L looked up at him, expression clear and seemingly innocent. "Je suis cinq et une moitié d'années, monsieur."

"In _English, _boy."

"Then, _sir," _the use of the title was slightly mocking, "I am five and a half years of age."

Edgenson felt his lips curve into a displeased frown, the vaguest lance of irritation spiking through him. No child under the age of ten should be able to pull off that tone of mocking cynicism so well, yet L did it to perfection and _then _some. "Then _why," _and the orphanage director tried for the same tone of voice in retaliation and was mildly annoyed to see the ghost of a smirk touch L's lips in response, "must you insist on acting like a two-year-old baby?" L bridled. "L, we here at _Close Haven _are _more _than aware of your intelligence – but _must_ you constantly utilise it such a petty fashion?"

"'Petty'-?!" The careless legs stopped swinging, the five year-old sitting bolt upright in his chair in indignation. "I am _not -"_

"And you are _violent, _child." Edgenson opened the file he'd thoughtfully looked out earlier, withdrawing a sheet from near the end and handing it to L. "You were rejected within the space of a day at your last orphanage because of your actions."

The boy snatched the sheet from his hands, dark eyes scanning the damning text upon it swiftly. Looking up again: "I never pushed her."

"That isn't what -"

"I _know _that isn't what this says!" L snapped. "Sir, I can _read!" _

"Then you deny the facts in front of you?"

"No." L thrust the paper back at the orphanage director, stiff. "I deny the _allegations_ in front of me. I did _not _push that girl."

"She claims you did, and _she_ was the one injured."

"She tried to push _me_ down the stairs." L turned away, his voice a low mutter as he hid his eyes with his hair. "Someone asked me a question and I answered it to the best of my ability and she called me a _freak_ for using 'such big words'." The boy parodied a girl's voice that last three words, stressing the syllables to the point of ridicule. "When she tried to push me I moved out of the way – is it _my _fault she slipped and fell?"

Edgenson studied L contemplatively, expression thoughtful. "…Why didn't you tell anyone in authority your side of the story?"

"Because no-one ever _listens _to me!"

"_Really, _L, that is utter non-"

L _glared _at him. "What did I tell you? _No-one _listens to me – everyone took _her _side! Every. Single. _One_ of them! They believed _her_ because she was pretty and older and _'responsible', _and I was the strange new _freaky_ kid who used 'big _words'." _The boy's expression was angry, his voice hurt.

Edgenson found himself _believing_ the child, much to his own surprise. "…And the windows they said you broke?"

"Oh, I broke _them." _L looked up at him, freely admitting his crimes.

"_Why?"_

"I didn't want to stay at the orphanage." A blink of dark eyes, as if this answer was obvious. "They were unkind there."

Flatly: "So you broke their windows."

"Yes."

"You -"

L cut his elder off. "It _worked, _didn't it?"

Edgenson found himself without anything to say.

* * *

"Don't you ever need to _sleep?" _Fifteen year-old Rebecca Hughes rolled over on the couch she was currently occupying in the orphanage 'TV room', staring over the sofa armrest at the small boy crouched in its shadow. It was nine-thirty in the evening, and most of the other pre-ten year-old children had been packed off to their rooms and bed.

L looked up at her from where he'd been staring at the television screen, eyes wide and innocent. "Everyone needs to sleep."

"But you," Rebecca insisted, "I've _never _seen you sleeping – not even _dozing."_

"Actually, nor have I." The girl's friend, Maria, sitting on the other end of the sofa Rebecca was hogging, chimed in. "L's always up first in the morning, and the last one to bed – when he can get away with it – at night."

"I _do _sleep," L replied politely, "just not very often." The boy was more inclined to be civil to the older children as long as they were civil in return – mentally, they were slightly more stimulating to talk with than _Close Haven_'s five year-olds.

"Don't you ever get headaches, then?" A boy this time, Adam, speaking from the shadows.

"_No."_ Slightly abrupt, this time.

"But -"

"_Aw_, leave him alone." The eldest in the room, sixteen year-old Nathan, swiped at Adam's head. "Can't you tell the kid doesn't like being bothered? Besides – the show's starting."

The room fell obligingly silent. It was Sunday evening, and the latest episode of _Murder, She Wrote _was airing. Most of the older children of the orphanage watched out of either general boredom (there being nothing better on any of the other channels) or genuine interest, some of the females aspiring to be the next Jessica Fletcher.

L, personally, found the whole series laughable. A murder-mystery-writing widow turned super-sleuth? Psh, _please. _It was _ridiculous. _That murders seemed to follow 'Jessica' wherever she went was just – it was just _beyond_ belief. And as for the individual plotlines for each episode? _Pathetic. _About a quarter of the way through the episode:

"He did it."

Eight teenagers (basically everyone in the room) at once swivelled their gazes from the television, suspiciously glancing to a calm L, from where the statement had arose.

"_What?" _Rebecca re-adopted her position of peering over the sofa armrest, looking disbelievingly at the small boy. "How can you say that? There's nothing on him!"

"Of course there is," L sniffily replied, "it is just the protagonist has not found it yet."

"What makes you think he did it?" Nathan asked, leaning forwards in curiosity.

"He has the motive and the means – _completely _unlike the suspect Ms. Fletcher is interrogating right now." L tried to explain his ideas simply to the others.

"And what was his motive?" Rebecca asked dubiously, arms folded and scepticism plastered clearly on her face.

"Classic case – he was in love with her, and she rejected him for someone else." L put his thumb to his lips, biting the nail in thought. "We have already learned the victim had an obsessive stalker who hounded her in the three months leading up to her death – I am inclined to believe it is _that _man." He nodded to the television, and reluctantly the room turned their gazes back to stare as L's suspect paraded across the screen in his mask of innocence.

Rebecca, obligingly, scoffed, turning back to L. "You're wrong."

L only raised his eyebrows at the girl, and deliberately looked away and back to _Murder, She Wrote._ The show went on. The clues were found, the suspects delivered up for scrutiny, the murderer caught in a fiendishly clever situation devised entirely by the protagonist that surely could have _only _come from a sensationalist novel writer.

The suspect L had pointed out at least three-quarters of an hour beforehand was proven guilty.

The room turned to him, suitably irritated and impressed.

L calmly inquired what was due to be on television next.

* * *

Like the other children L attended a local primary school, and took great pleasure in vexing his teachers there. The boy fitted in _nowhere – _he was far too intelligent to be placed in amongst the younger children, and yet amongst the elders he stirred up resentment, ten and eleven year-olds fractious and muttering about the pale junior who monopolised the adults' attentions so, the too-smart _baby _who riled up everyone else because he was _always _right. Eventually a large fight broke out, with L set upon by a group of boys – the child squirmed away from them and ran for the relative safety of a nearby teacher. L was taken 'home' to the orphanage, and the school requested he be transferred elsewhere – they simply didn't _have _the facilities to deal with him.

As no other primary school in the area would have him the orphanage debated sending L to a secondary school – the boy politely declined the offer, and inquired whether _Close Haven _would please have him home-schooled.

"But who would _teach _you?" An exasperated Dora asked him, Edgenson watching the exchange with his usual absorbed expression in the background.

"Give me books," L replied, his appearance almost pleading, "papers, articles…I will learn."

"You will _learn _if we can get you into a good school -"

"No," Edgenson laid a hand on his employee's arm, "I agree with the boy."

"You do?" Dora looked surprised.

"You do?" L perked up, his eyes lightening with some inner, sparkling fire.

"I do," affirmed _Close Haven_'s director, "because I see no other situation as advantageous as the one you propose."

"_Monsieur – _sir, I -"

"_L," _Edgenson cut across the boy's potential babble of thanks, "you once said no-one listened to you."

"Yes," the boy straightened as the man's gaze fell upon him, "that is correct."

"I have listened to you – now make sure you return the courtesy." Edgenson crouched down on his haunches, so that he could be on eye-level with L. "I have no doubt you can learn with no teacher but yourself – you could learn in an _empty room, _child. What goes on in that head of yours is fathomless; I am no genius to reason with the intellectual that you are, and am in no ways prepared for the _wonder _you will no doubt become." A sigh, "and yet, like the others under my employ, we have been placed in charge of you. Lawliet, I know you will do what you will do and no power on this earth will halt you should you set your mind on something, but…swear you will always take care."

L nodded once, adjusting the baggy blue t-shirt he wore so it didn't fall completely off of his shoulder. "…I swear."

* * *

A new care-worker joined the orphanage, a young woman by the name of Josephine. She was there to replace Milly, the employee L had scared off nearly half a year before. Dora, once more exasperated with L and threatening to quit, _gladly _handed charge of the boy to the newcomer.

Josephine didn't know what to make of the child. Their first meeting had been in the orphanage library, Josephine walking in to reshelve some books left lying around in the playroom. All the other children were at school and so Josephine had not expected someone to be sitting behind the library door, smacking the wood into L's back when she entered and sending the small child _flying._

"_Regardez où vous allez!__"_

Josephine stopped dead; looking at the black-haired boy sprawled out on the floor, _glaring _her way. "_Oh! _I'm so sorry – I never saw you there and -" She halted, suddenly catching that the child had yelled at her in _French _for her intrusion, "-I never knew there was a foreign child at the orphanage…"

"I'm not _foreign," _L snapped, getting to his feet and going to retrieve the book that had been knocked out of his hands when he had been so rudely shifted. "I'm British by birth."

Josephine frowned at him. "Then how _old _are you? Ten? _Eleven?" _The boy had had a perfect accent in both his English and French – it took a few years to learn to be so proficient, and although the child was so small –

"I'm _five." _L was positively glaring _daggers _by that point, clutching his book stiffly to his chest.

"But -" Josephine paused, vaguely remembering Edgenson's wry smile when he had excused her from his office that morning, his quiet comment of '…and you _may _want to watch out for L.' It had stumped her at the time but – "You're L?"

"Pourquoi _vous_ inquiétez-vous?"

Josephine dredged up her old language skills – she never _had _been that fond of French; she'd taken German at school instead -, rusty cogs clicking together to translate what the clearly bridled boy in front of her had just said. "…Well, I'm new here so -"

"I _noticed."_

Josephine felt herself getting a little irritated. "Listen, I'm sorry I knocked you over – I honestly wasn't expecting anyone to be in the library -"

The boy, pointedly, rolled up the side of his t-shirt, revealing a lovely bruise that was just beginning to darken about his hip. "You hurt me."

"And I'm _sorry, _I really am." The care-worker insisted. "It was an accident. Haven't you ever done anything by accident before?" L paused, something flickering in his gaze, and Josephine drove home her temporary advantage – "_Please. _Let's be friends, L." She didn't want a clearly intelligent young boy _hating_ her outright on her first day. "Come on," she extended a hand, "why don't we go to the kitchen and see if they've got any cake? _I _certainly feel like some and – well, the other children aren't here, are they?" Josephine smiled brightly. "What they don't know won't hurt them."

L looked at the hand doubtfully. "…Your reasoning is flawed."

"Probably." A nod. "But I overheard Dora talking about some strawberry shortcake the other day and I'm dying to try some. Have you ever had strawberry shortcake before?" L shook his head 'no', bangs flying about his face. Josephine affected mock-horror. "Blasphemy! _Come," _the woman seized one of the boy's hands, letting L clutch onto his book with the other as she dragged him to the kitchen, "I have great wonders to show you!"

The two sat together in the kitchen for _three hours, _systematically demolishing an entire strawberry shortcake between them, not to mention three cups of coffee (Josephine), one cup of hot chocolate, two glasses of lemonade (both L, in that order), and a whole bag of mini-marshmallows (again, shared between the two). By the end of it they were both stuffed to bursting, but Josephine had quickly earned L's forgiveness and the two had hit off a rapport of sorts – the woman was a childish adult, and the boy was a mature child, and over cake, coffee, marshmallows and chocolate they quickly found that even though it was perfectly awkward discussing something with someone with an age gap to you of about twenty years, you could still have a pretty decent conversation.

And _L_ discovered he adored strawberry shortcake.

* * *

"Just so you know kid, I find this utterly, _utterly _morbid."

"I _know, _Josephine." L looked up at the care-worker tiredly, expression bored. "You have told me that _six times _in the past hour."

"It's still morbid though."

"Josephine!" Even at five, L could pull off irritation remarkably well. "If my subject matter disturbs you so much why don't you just go _somewhere else?"_

"I _can't," _the female protested, "what if there's a really nasty picture and you get scared?" L looked at her flatly. "…_Alright, _so I admit that's not a very likely situation but _still! _It's my job!"

"Josephine, your job is to watch over and comfort distressed and deprived children." L carefully placed down the brief he'd been reading through, looking up so his dark gaze met the woman's straight on. "Do I _look _distressed?"

"….No."

"There you are then."

"But -"

"_Josephine…"_

The woman sighed, falling silent. L was going over old police files opened to the public domain, working with the reports within to try and reach a satisfactory conclusion before reading the actual result of the case. Most of the time the boy seemed to get the answer right – at least, she assumed so. L didn't speak as he scanned the files, the lists of evidence, the photographs… L was _good_ at this sort of thing _– _anyone with a half a brain could easily see _that_. And yet…_urgh, _it didn't matter.

Josephine just didn't have the stomach to deal with it.

* * *

L had been born on the thirty-first of October, the day most commonly known in the West as _Halloween._ Some of the care-workers who had been placed in charge of L over the span of his short life said it was an appropriate date for the child – the boy could be a little _monster_ when he felt like it_._

L celebrated his sixth birthday at _Close Haven, _and was given a giant chocolate cake by the care-workers, and a hand-crafted blank jigsaw puzzle, the only marking a small 'L' in the top-left corner. Josephine, thoughtfully, baked the boy a small strawberry shortcake for him to eat by himself, and L spent his birthday in relative happiness and solitude. He deigned to come out from his room and join in the Halloween party the orphanage threw for a little while and everyone was astonished, the boy actually _smiling _when another child offered him some sugar-sprinkled doughnuts to eat.

The following month, someone asked to adopt L. They were a middle-aged childless couple, kind, friendly and passing all the required security checks. They'd visited for a few weeks, looking for a little boy to call their own, and taken a liking to the reclusive L.

L politely thanked them for the offer, told them it was nothing personal, and declined. The couple was saddened, as expected, but ended up adopting another boy instead. Josephine went to L's room when they were leaving, watching from the doorway as L stood at the window, looking down on the departing family that could have been his.

"…Didn't you like them?" The woman asked gently, tentatively, unsure of what exactly was going on in L's mind.

"I liked them."

"Then…" Josephine was confused, "why didn't you want to go with them?"

"I don't _like _liking people." L didn't turn to look at her, still staring out of the window as his once-fellow orphan climbed happily into the car owned by his new parents. "Liking people gets you hurt."

Josephine bit her lip. "Don't you like _me…?" _She couldn't hide the vague note of upset in her voice.

"I don't _hate _you, if that's what you're asking." The car drove off, the new family drove off, and L stared blankly at a now-empty road. "Just don't ask me to care, because I won't."

"Alright…" There was a lump in Josephine's throat that wouldn't go away, her eyes pricking uncomfortably as she insistently focused them on L's stubborn, unmoving back.

The boy said nothing else to her.

Josephine eventually wandered sadly away.

* * *

On the twenty-eighth of February in the year L was to turn seven the boy was utterly silent, nose pressed to the cold glass of his room, watching the English rain pouring down outside. Thinking him ill Josephine brought him some chicken soup, and offered him a woollen blanket.

"I'm not sick." L didn't touch the soup, but accepted the blanket, wrapping himself in the brightly-coloured knit so that his slight frame nigh completely disappeared into the soft folds.

"Then what's wrong?" Josephine queried, sitting concernedly at the boy's side.

"Nothing," her young charge replied, "it just felt as if someone walked across my grave."

* * *

Arthur Edgenson stood at his office window, and watched as his youngest care-worker, Josephine, and his strangest orphan, L, played tennis in the rain.

"It'll be the death of them, I know it will." Dora folded her arms, sniffing in disapproval as she stood at her employer's shoulder. "They'll catch cold and pass it to all the children and we'll have sneezing and coughing fits for _weeks."_

Edgenson ignored the comment. "Did Josephine say _why_ she suddenly felt the need to play outdoors in this weather?"

"'L seemed depressed'," Dora did a reasonable mimicry of her co-worker's voice, "and 'a bit of insanity always cheers everyone up.'"

_Close Haven_'s director resumed watching the two playing outside, the boy and the young woman a silent movie where the rain bled out the colours and left the screen in shades of blue and grey. Both of them were soaked through to the skin, L's dark's hair plastered to his face and neck, but the boy – ah, the boy was _smiling, _and though the heavens stormed down upon his companion and him he didn't seem to care the slightest bit, racing around the tennis court to return the sodden ball Josephine hit his way.

"He's a strange child," Dora suddenly spoke up again, eyes following L's form curiously, "isn't he?"

"Yes," Edgenson smiled a smile to himself, nodding very slightly. "He's a strange child indeed."

L continued to happily play tennis outside in the rain, and no-one was sent out to stop him.

He had a cold for the following fortnight.

* * *

**Shadow: **I'm not putting translations of the French in because the entire _point _of L using that language is that it is unintelligible (to non-French speakers). Putting in translations would just circumvent the entire point, and render the usage point_less._

The OCs are necessary, but will get dutifully weeded out as the plot progresses, I assure you.

_Murder, She Wrote _was a popular television series that aired...for a pretty long time in Britain. I, personally, never sat down and watched an entire episode - I found the whole idea of it too ridiculous to even _try _to comprehend. Like L, I am one of those irritating individuals that sits and points out the murderer long before the episode end - I usually sit and have a debate over it with my little cousin, while my grandma flaps her hands in the background telling us to 'stop being so smart! It might _not _be him'. Uh-huh. xD (Just for the record? It usually is.)

If any _Death Note _fan among you (most notably those of you possessing the thirteenth, 'How to Read' book) doesn't get the significance of L's being-depressed date, shame on you!! x3

Tell me what you think?

* * *

_"I'm not saying that we should kill a teacher everyday just so I can __lose weight, I'm just saying when tragedy strikes, we have to look on __the bright side."_


	2. The Sphinx's Smile

**Shadow: **It vaguely amuses me that after the hounding I've received off of certain quarters to update this story I'm updating this now when only one of them knows it's near completion. I'll probably get told I'm evil for it, and I'll just sit and happily agree. ;3

_**Note:**_ I still haven't got _Another Note, _and I'm still mourning the fact. I'll go stalk my favourite manga store sometime next week (it's _June_ next week?!) to see if they've got it in yet, I do dutifully assure you. Anyway – this whole 'case' is based on a paragraph from the novel, but the actual plot of this little thing? Mine.

More love to Kelpy, 'Kari and Compy, without whom this chapter wouldn't live.

_**Warnings: **_There is violence, and explosions, and horror. Rated for blood, death, and chibi L being rather morbid and antisocial.

**

* * *

**

Ashes to Ashes

**2. **_**The Sphinx's Smile**_

_The sphinx is a one to ask riddles, prowling the hot sands to guard the way. What lurks behind her is a mystery, and her smile says nothing. Beyond the sphinx lurk the answers to great secrets, but to get the answers the creature's riddled test must be passed._

_Those who fail the test are devoured._

* * *

"L, anytime this week would be appreciated." Josephine folded her arms across her chest, frowning down at the black-haired boy sat on the floor at her feet. "All the other children are already making their way to the coach." L looked up at her stonily; black eyes hard flints of stubbornness. "Just put your socks and shoes on already."

A shake of feathery hair, dark as soot against white-as-snow skin. The little princess, spoilt as rotten as the apple she'd later choke on. "No."

"_L-!" _Josephine's patience was reaching its limits. The little genius boy had been dragging his feet all day, deliberately taking as long as possible to do even the smallest action. "You'd almost think you didn't want to _go _today, or something."

L looked at her flatly. "I don't."

"Tough," Josephine crouched down on her haunches so she was at eye-level with the child, "you're going. Now – put your socks and shoes on!"

"_No."_ L shook his head more emphatically. "I don't like them; I'm not wearing them, and you can't _make _me." He glowered at his care-worker, obstinate to the core. "If you try to force me it's child-abuse."

Josephine gritted her teeth and resisted the overwhelming urge to snatch up the infuriating boy in front of her, take him across her knee, and _smack _him. _"Why _won't you wear your socks and shoes?"

"They restrict my feet." L wiggled his bare toes as if in proof, pale digits barely peeking out from underneath the baggy dungarees he was wearing over his long-sleeved shirt.

"They _protect _your feet."

"If I don't go out, my feet won't need protecting."

"You're going out, L; there's no way you're getting out of this trip."

"But-"

"_L!" _Josephine snapped suddenly. _"Put on the bloody footwear!"_

A long, _shocked _silence. It was the first time Josephine had ever really _yelled _at L in anger. The boy's mind went on autopilot, blurting out a traditionally tangential response. "…You're not meant to swear in front of children."

"And _you're _not meant to irritate your care-workers to the point where they _start _swearing at you." Josephine was still greatly ill-tempered, and not up for more of L's obtrusiveness. "Now put your socks and shoes on like a good boy or I swear to _God _you shall never see another slice of strawberry shortcake for the rest of the time I am working within this orphanage."

L's expression of approximate horror said one thing, and one thing alone – 'You _wouldn't.'_

Josephine returned the look full-force, arms folded and will unmoving. 'I _would.'_

As an irrefutable genius, L knew when he was beaten. "…Can we compromise?"

…

A short while later L could be seen trotting out to the coach where the rest of the children going on the trip that day waited, the bottoms of his denim dungarees and laces of a pair of trainers trailing along the ground. Josephine, at his side, looked vexed, but L's expression was just more than a little smug as he bit into a sugar-covered doughnut.

He wasn't wearing socks.

* * *

Eight years-old and currently very much doughnut-less, L Lawliet was so _very _much unimpressed with the coach ride to Winchester. Sitting with arms folded L leaned back in his chair on the bus, sulking – though he'd never _admit _to such a thing of course. He was an irrefutable genius. Geniuses did not _sulk. _They brooded. L was brooding.

Ignoring the dreary January landscape speeding past the window beside him L tugged irritably on the laces currently encasing his feet in shoes, uncomfortable dressed in so many layers. To ward off the winter chill Josephine had _insisted _on L's being bundled up in a thick white coat and mittens, pulling the outerwear on over the boy's protests and dungarees.

It was the seventh of that month, not long after New Year. Edgenson, director of _Close Haven, _sensing dissent and restlessness growing within the ranks, had organised a trip for the whole orphanage to the local city of Winchester, the original proposal of London both too expensive and too far away for a day-trip. There was only so long, after all, a group of children could spend indoors playing with their Christmas gifts before fights broke out.

And so, the happy-happy day-trip to the city of Winchester, the once-upon-a-time capital of England where the unenthusiastic orphans of _Close Haven _were due to get 'history' and 'culture' forcibly rammed down their throats. The trip was obligatory, to the disgust of many, and it was with much grumbling the children had boarded their hired coach and slunk down into their assigned seats upon it, muttering.

Winchester was not, in L's opinion, a very interesting city. It was an old place with rather dull stone architecture, the local Council trying to brighten up the battered cobbles with strategically-placed splashes of green grass and flowers. Hanging around at the back of his group L meandered along, absentmindedly tuning out Marcus' rambling at the front of the procession about the local history. There were much more interesting conversations to overhear from the unsuspecting public, especially around the local newspaper shop…

"-So I said to him: '_Michael, _I fully understand you want to do your bit for the local community and all, but that's no reason to sacrifice yourself for it. I told you a long time ago you would've made a better teacher.' But – does that boy ever listen to me? No, he was all up with his 'mother, I like my job' and – oh, I just don't know what to do." The woman speaking was middle-aged, adjusting a bag of shopping in her right hand as she talked with a friend. "The police force is so _dangerous _these days. Just look at the news!"

Her friend, another female looking to be of roughly the same age, tutted sympathetically, "I know, isn't it dreadful? If my Ashleigh had been at the station this morning – why, I don't know _what _I would have done. Exploding fruit! _Honestly – _what is this world coming to? It's a miracle no-one was _killed."_

_Exploding fruit? _L stopped dead in his steps, staring unabashedly at the two women until eventually one of them noticed him. "Little boy, are you lost…?" The one with the son called Michael spoke to him, expression sympathetic as she swept her gaze across the cute child's attire and solitude. "Were you out with your mother?"

L shook his head, dark bangs flying once more. "No, ma'am." His voice was still childish, but his elocution was flawless. "My mother is dead."

"Oh," the woman looked repentant, "I'm sorry -"

"Why are you sorry?" L cut her off, frowning as he looked up at the adult. "Were you the one that killed her?"

"No, of course not -"

"Then don't apologise for something you did not do."

It was the woman's turn to frown. "You're a terribly rude young boy, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am." L didn't bat an eyelash, his expression perfectly straight as he remained perfectly impertinent. "It would probably be because of my lack of a stable parental-figure growing up – that's what the psychologist reported about me, anyway."

Getting slightly waspish now: "What do you _want, _boy?"

"I was curious." L shrugged affably. "You mentioned exploding _fruit, _and it caught my ear as I -"

"_Lawliet!" _Pounding feet on the pavement, a voice laced with exasperation.

The second woman, the one that was _not _Michael's mother, glanced up to see a brown-haired young woman racing across the cobbles towards them. "Is that your guardian?" She glanced down at the solemn boy before her. "She's seems annoyed."

L ignored the question. "The fruit…I assume it had explosives inside of it?"

"Yes; a pack was sent to the local police station early this morning…"

"Did -"

"_L," _a hand seized the child's shoulder, turning the boy around so he could meet Josephine's irate gaze, "what were you told about wandering off?!"

"But I _didn't _wander off, Josephine." L's reply was placid. "I just didn't try to keep up with the rest of the group."

"And no backchat!" Josephine frowned at the boy, before glancing up at the two disgruntled-looking women before her. "My apologies if L was bothering you; he can be such an arrogantly precocious child at times."

"It's alright." The second woman nodded. "My children were little once – it's just a phase they go through."

Josephine plastered a smile on her face. "Yes, you're right." _Except, of course, _her mind internally added, _L's 'phase' has been going on his whole _life. "Come on," she looked down at the pouting – _brooding, _geniuses did not _pout – _boy beside her, "We have a group to catch up with."

_­_L protested. "But…the exploding fruit…?"

"_No, _L." Josephine had a firm grip on the boy's wrist, dragging the child away from the newspaper stands and the gossiping public after the rest of the group ahead of them.

L kicked and struggled and protested every step of the way.

* * *

"Winchester Cathedral is the second largest Cathedral in Europe. It was originally built in 1079 by -"

Right about that point L, hanging jadedly in Josephine's grasp, switched off. Dora, droning out her lesson on history at the front of the group, failed to inspire any sort of passionate interest for culture in him whatsoever. The eldest care-worker was standing talking to the entirety of _Close Haven_'s orphansin front of the Cathedral she was so enthusiastically prattling about and…she was going to be lucky if she could even count on one hand the amount that were paying attention to her. Marcus, her fellow workmate, was smothering a yawn with one hand, and Josephine was looking rather wistfully at a café not far from the green surrounding the Cathedral.

The bells in the belfry began to ring, a pretty melody signally the rapidly approaching noon.

"-And so!" The sudden exclamation caught everyone's drifting attention, snaring it with the proverbial crook and dragging it back to Dora. The care-worker smiled (rather evilly, L privately thought), glad to have made the children – not to mention her two co-workers – jump. "I'm going to go check the clergy will be happy with all of us traipsing through the Cathedral – if they're not, we'll break into two groups and meet up again later…"

L stopped paying attention again and listened to the bells. They jangled away merrily, the bell-ringers clearly having a good time below the tower, pretty peals echoing through the January air before eventually fading away to silence. L was aware Dora must've wandered away to the Cathedral at some point but didn't really care; listening as the big bell was sonorously rang for the hour.

_One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight… nine…ten…eleven…twel-_

On the twelfth ring of the biggest bell, the Cathedral exploded.

* * *

"_Dora!" _It was Josephine that shrieked first, when the echoes of the explosion had not yet finished, when the imprint of orange fire was still burned on everyone's retinas.

"_Dora!" _She shrieked again, L's hand still tightly in her own, calling for the senior care-worker that had went into the Cathedral only minutes before.

The world began shrieking with her. It began with low muttering, surprised noises tumbling from shocked faces, slack jaws, building up into a dull roar of anger and pain and horror. Someone from the café across the street screamed, and there was the sound of china being smashed.

The entire front face of Winchester Cathedral – the beautiful stained-glass window, the ornate steeples, the entrance -, not to mention a good section of the left wall and wing, was in ruins. Dust hung in the air, choking, and fire still burned ferociously on wooden beams in the wreckage.

"Marcus! The children-!" Josephine dropped L's hand but the boy stayed at her side, determined not to be ushered together by Marcus to stand in a frightened huddle. When Josephine ran for the Cathedral L was at her heels – the fact the boy was allowed to _do _such a thing only proved Josephine's distraction, and worry for the missing Dora.

Hell was fire, and dust, and death. Hell was blindness and burning, with shifting ground beneath one's feet. Hell was roasting flesh and ruined glory, and sharp glittering glass that cut and hurt while the smoke brought tears to the eyes of the damned stumbling through it.

The world had gone to hell.

Josephine pushed her way through the rubble of Winchester Cathedral, L clambering over rocks and ruined architecture, trailing after her. Everyone who had been near the front entrance during the explosion was dead – bodies, once living people touring the building, littered the ground. L slipped and slid past the corpses, his mouth firmly set, a hand covering his nose as best he could to try and mask out the horrible smell of burned meat.

"Dora? _Dora?" _Josephine stopped to examine the bodies, her face pale but getting greener with each corpse she looked at – though none of the fallen was her co-worker, all these…these dead lumps of meat had once been people - real _living _people - instead of stray limbs, faceless things without a name to comfort them in their fiery grave.

"Josephine…?" There were people alive further in – injured, but alive.

"Dora!" Josephine dived forward to the speaking body – the elder care-worker lying bleeding, trapped beneath some lighter rocks. Over the crackle of the flames eating up beams from the wrecked ceiling L could hear the echoing shriek of distant sirens –

Josephine was holding the wounded Dora to her. L moved forward until he stood beside both the women, a black shadow with a backdrop of flames. "Shall I go and fetch assistance for you?"

"Lawliet…?" Dora sounded dazed. She probably had severe concussion, L thought, judging by the large amount of blood on her right temple. "Lawliet, why are you-? Josephine, you shouldn't have let him -" The woman trailed off, sentence ending in a pained groan as she placed her head back down on her younger co-worker's shoulder.

Josephine patted her arm a little awkwardly, gaze locked on the solemn child before her. "You shouldn't be here, L. Why did you follow me? This isn't any place for a child." With any other child Josephine would've been in hysterics at the thought of an innocent looking at what L was, standing amid such carnage, but…she'd _seen _the case files L had been looking at over the years. L was different.

The boy's black eyes were lit by the fires around them, his dungarees coated in thick ash and dust. "I'm here regardless of whether it's a suitable environment for me or not," a wry, humourless smile from the eight year-old, "so that rather makes you entire argument rather a moot point, doesn't it?" When Josephine looked as if she was going to argue, he shrugged. "I'm going to go fetch the arriving paramedics anyway, Josephine, and it's corpses all the way out of here." Dora flinched.

This was little either of his care-workers could say, recognising the child's valid point. Quietly, Josephine whispered, "Take care, then."

Slowly, L picked his way out of the rubble, returning the way he had come in, walking past the dead. A teetering ruin of a fallen angel crashed to the ground as he walked nearby and L jumped, back-stepping and thudding into something hard behind him. Rough edges pressed into the boy's spine.

Twisting around, L came face to rock-face with a mammoth water font. It's sheer _size _must have helped it stay firm during the explosion, the ruins of a nearby pillar that would've been standing in front of it (were it not in lots of little jagged pieces right then) suggesting as to why the font was still in one piece. The pillar would've protected the font from the majority of the blast. Floating in the water in the font, alongside dust and debris from all the fallen masonry, was a boat.

It wasn't a particularly well-crafted boat by any means - a small, rather crudely made thing of some sort of stiffened paper -, but it had apparently survived being in the water, and had managed to carry three just-as-pathetic-looking dolls made out of some sort of rough cotton bound with elastic bands, and stuffed with sawdust. Curiously removing the boat from the water (after standing on the tips of his feet just to reach over the font edge to grab at it) L gathered the three dolls up in one hand, shaking droplets of water off of their sailing vessel of choice with the other. All three of the dolls had rather badly-drawn expressions put on their cloth faces, wrapped in little blue-and-white striped aprons with pictures on the front. In the bad lighting of the ruined Cathedral L couldn't quite make out what the drawings were of – so he shoved the dolls into his dungaree pocket and – discovering the little boat wouldn't fit alongside them – dropped the paper boat back into the font's water.

He resumed his journey.

* * *

"Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"Do you want some more cocoa?"

"Would you like another blanket?"

L looked up rather blankly at the paramedics fussing around him, seated cross-legged on a patch of grass just outside the Cathedral, wrapped in two blankets with a mug of hot chocolate shoved into his hands. The ones fluttering around him fluctuated, coming and going, attending to the injured and helping shift the dead, but their primary reaction to him was very much the same: concerned, worried, and _deeply _patronising.

"I am uninjured." L bristled and glared when one of the female paramedics tried to pet his hair, his words clipped. "You should go help someone who requires your assistance. There are many injured inside the Cathedral." He'd already told the first group to confront him on his emergence from the rubble of Dora's condition. A crew had rushed inside immediately.

"Not all wounds are physical, sweetheart." The woman was trying to be motherly. L did not appreciate it. "There were a lot of scary things inside that building – do you want to talk about it?"

"The dead people you mean?" L looked at his current companion solidly, noting with vague satisfaction the woman's flinching at his bluntness. "Or would you be talking about the ones still living, even with most of their bodies crushed under the rubble?"

The soothing smile the paramedic had been wearing froze on her face. "I…what?"

"I'd estimate a good few portion of them will require surgery for internal bleeding;" L nodded a hand to the people being carefully lifted out of the Cathedral beside them as they spoke, "there will be amputation in some cases as well – some of the limbs I saw were irreparably damaged. Let us hope gangrene does not set in while the emergency cases are being taken care of, or there will be a lot more unnecessary death."

There was a long pause, and then the paramedic stood up rather abruptly, leaving without saying goodbye. L watched her go with one eyebrow raised, his expression darkening somewhat when he saw the woman stop to talk to two young men dressed in suits that had been attempting to talk to a sobbing woman, pointing them over in L's direction. When both looked up at the boy, and the little plastic labels on their pockets proclaiming them to be on-site trauma psychologists became visible, L scowled, radiating unfriendly vibes that could be felt a mile off. One of the therapists faltered when he caught sight of L's dark countenance, but his partner dragged him along regardless.

…Idiot.

* * *

This had not been the plan for Josephine's day. Really, things were quite complicated enough supervising an orphanage-full of children to Winchester for the day; there was no need for explosions and injuries. The children were scared; Dora was rather badly injured and currently being packed into an ambulance, and –

Josephine just didn't know what to do.

Marcus laid a hand on her arm. "I just called the director… He's going to contact Dora's family. Shall I go with her to the hospital-?"

"Please." Josephine didn't think she could stand anymore blood. "Is the coach-?"

"The driver won't be returning until the end of the day." Her co-worker shook his head. "We're all stuck in Winchester until then."

"Then how will you get home from the hospital?"

"Taxi; I have money on me."

"If you're sure…?"

"I am." Marcus nodded his head, quickly striding over to the ambulance where Dora was and sliding in. Josephine was left with the worried children, blood on her shirt from where Dora had rested against it. Moving her eyes over the children before her the care-worker carefully did a mental count, checking they were all there. Everything _seemed _fine, but – wait.

There was one missing.

Even more carefully re-checking all the children Josephine took note of their faces, striking them off in her mind. At the end of it all –

Oh _why_ was it always L?

Josephine glanced around herself, searching for a mop of black hair, wide, even blacker eyes, and –

There he was, seated on some grass wrapped up in a blanket, being questioned by two –

_Oh, someone _please _tell me they didn't send psychologists over to talk to him?_ Josephine barely resisted the urge to groan, moving through the crowds to retrieve her errant charge but –

A hand caught her arm. "Excuse me miss, but you should really get that injury seen to."

"Huh?" Josephine glanced down at the hand, gaze sliding up an attached limb, up, up, to a paramedic's face. "…I'm not injured."

"But…the blood?"

"Oh, I was _holding _an injured person inside the Cathedral and -" Josephine found herself being steered towards a nearby ambulance to take a seat, "what do you think you're doing?"

"If you were inside the Cathedral, you need to be checked over."

"But -" Josephine was pushed down. "I'm fine, really -" She kept straining to simultaneously keep an eye on L as well as the other children in her care. "I really don't have time for this -" And…the younger of those two psychologists was really beginning to look quite disturbed… "I have children I'm supposed to be caring for -" The paramedic continued to ignore her, pushing her sleeves back to look for any scratches or cuts. "That boy over there – some psychologists are talking to him -"

"Then he's in good hands; you don't need to worry about him." A stethoscope was whipped out, pressed against Josephine's heart. "Were you inside the Cathedral long? Too much smoke inhalation is extremely bad for you -"

"I'm not worried about the boy_." _Josephine irritably batted at the cold instrument. "It's your therapists I'm bothered about."

"They are trained professionals -"

"There's no amount of training you could get in the _universe_ that could prepare you for L." Josephine scowled when the paramedic tried to roll up her shirt, so she snatched her clothing back out of the other's fingertips. "Do you _mind?"_

"Please miss, I cannot complete this check-up if you will insist on being so -"

"I never wanted a check-up in the first place!!" Josephine got to her feet in an indignant rush. "Why don't you go help someone that actually _needs _your assistance?" She motioned vaguely to a babbling black-haired woman sitting not far from her, another paramedic patting her on the back repeating the name 'Shea' over and over again. (Her name?) "Go help your co-workers or something!" The young care-worker made as if to storm righteously off, eyes once more focused on L (the younger psychologist now rather disgustingly voiding the contents of his stomach out on the ground, the elder looking more than a little queasy himself). Oh just _what _had the boy said this time…?

A hand grabbed at Josephine's arm again – the paramedic _still? _"Miss, I really must insist -"

Josephine gritted her teeth, pushed beyond patience. "Listen to me please, and listen to me well. Unless you want your therapists to end up in therapy before the day is out, I strongly recommend you move out of my way. _Now."_

"But miss – you really need a check-up, and they're only trying to help the boy -"

"The only help that boy needs is a kick up the arse at times!! Now will you please _move? _Lawliet has the tendency to mentally scar psychologists he doesn't like very much." Frustrated, the paramedic finally moved out of the way. Josephine breezed past him, forcing her way through the panicked crowds still flocking around. She could only thank God Marcus had had the sense to move the children out of the way of the main swarm, but they were still within visible range of the Cathedral; they could still see the blood and the horror…

As soon as she got L, they were getting out of here.

The boy himself… L sat calmly, large eyes innocent and owlish as Josephine approached. The blue blanket wrapped around the child's form only made him look younger, more childish, but Josephine knew the devil's mind that lurked behind the jewel-black gaze - as did the psychologists judging by their appearances, the younger one still looking too physically ill to even speak when Josephine finally arrived in their presence.

"Josephine!" L had the cheek to look pleased, perking up slightly.

"Is…" the elder therapist took a deep breath (he was still rather off-colour), turning to the care-worker, "is this child yours?"

"Do I _look _old enough to be a mother?" Josephine was offended, but too weary at that point to cause too much of a ruckus. "L is my charge – one of many, and I'd very much like to have him back right now."

"You're his nanny?"

"Care-worker." Josephine's reply was flat. When she motioned for him to, L rose to his feet and dropped his blanket, coming to her side. The woman looked down at the boy. "What have you been saying?"

The child straightened his back somewhat. "Well -"

"_No." _The other psychologist finally looked up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand – probably to clear the last remaining traces of vomit. "I – that child-"

"I went through some of the old case files, Jo-seph-ine." L took his care-worker's hand, swinging it back and forth in a mockery of sweet play. "I was talking to the nice doctors about those murders where the people got their intestines ripped out and draped about their houses." Josephine remembered that file… "They looked like paper chains!"

There was a sudden scuffle, the smack of a hand over a mouth as the young therapist stumbled to his feet retching, running off somewhere. His elder counterpart watched him go, expression somewhere between pity and annoyance. "…I'm not quite sure whether to commend that child for his obvious intelligence, or beg you to have him instituitionilised for his almost sociopathic attitude." The therapist looked at both Josephine and L. "Either way, I'd say there's something very different about that boy – he's either disturbed, or brilliant."

"Doctor," a mirthless smile touched Josephine's lips, her hand holding just that little bit more tightly the fingers encased in her own, "I didn't need a degree to tell you that."

L just smirked.

* * *

It was appropriate it was raining. There had to be a lot of people mourning all over Winchester, and the sleet rain lashing down was the unstoppable tears of the masses. It was just approaching six o' clock in the evening, the heavens having opened an hour previously –

_Well, _thought Josephine more than a little morosely, _at least the rain'll put the Cathedral's fires out. _

They were sitting in a restaurant Edgenson had booked for the children and their three care-workers to attend for their evening meal before returning back to _Close Haven,_ but barely anyone was actually eating the food they'd ordered. L, troublesome boy that he was, had been placed firmly at his chaperone's side in the seating arrangements, and Josephine could use the position to tell the child had only given cursory attention to his chicken burger before fishing some weird dolls out of his dungaree pocket to play with. Josephine let him play, worn out inside and out, and went back to studying the weather, one eye on the children at all times. It had been a horrible day, and she just wanted to get back to the orphanage.

On the hour, they all heard a familiar roar start again, a deep thundering boom.

It came from elsewhere, thank God, but still everyone who heard it flinched, eyes flying to the window of the restaurant. In the sky above the city another plume of smoke rose into the air, black fighting against liquid grey. Another fire bloomed to life, the horizon aglow with fierce orange and red even in the downpour.

"The guildhall…" another patron of the restaurant rose to her feet, chair legs scraping the floor in a horrible screech. "That's the guildhall…"

Her eating companion, another female, just kept staring in horror. "They've blown up the guildhall…?" No-one questioned who 'they' were. 'They' simply had to be the ones responsible for the Cathedral's explosion at noon.

Some of the children started to cry again. L placed the dolls he held in one hand, squeezing them tightly with his fingers until it looked like the cloth they were made of was about to explode from the pressure of the sawdust within. "…The guildhall…do the various professions of Winchester gather there?"

"What does that matter?" Josephine rushed from her seat, moving to comfort one of the younger children who were in tears.

L trailed after her, repeating his question. "Do the many professions gather there?"

"_L!" _His care-worker scowled over another child's head. "This isn't the time!"

"But it's important -"

"No, it is _not _important!" Josephine snapped, the last shreds of her sorely-tired patience shattering into fine glittering powder, sharp dust that would cut and sting. "L, people are _dead_. This isn't one of your games, and it isn't one of your precious case files, so I'd appreciate it if you stopped acting so _bloody_ inappropriately and actually have some sense of respect!!"

L's eyes narrowed slightly, his mouth setting in a firm line. "Josephine -"

"_Go to your seat!" _

L looked at his care-worker for a few more moments, expression cold, defiant, but eventually he turned around and went back to his chair. Josephine went back to comforting the sobbing child in her arms. Ten minutes later she turned around to rebuke L once more for his rude attitude, only to find the boy's seat vacant. Searching the restaurant –

L wasn't anywhere to be found.

* * *

He had followed the bells.

Deep sonorous ringing echoed through the air, the staccato raindrops beating a rhythm of their own in the space between each call. L wasn't sure, really, why he had followed the bells. Unlike the Cathedral's melody this ringing was a mournful dirge, a lamentation, but it had seemed the appropriate thing to do upon vacating the restaurant and hearing the elegy swelling in the air. _'Seemed' _being the operative word there.

L was cold now, and soaking wet, dark hair plastered over to his skin. He'd left his coat and mittens behind in the restaurant and was now sorely regretting his decision, hovering uncertainly on the bottom of a set of church steps while the bells above kept up their solemn peal. Golden light spilled down the steps towards him, just touching the edge of one of L's shoes, but still L hesitated, keeping just within the winter gloom.

There was a _coffin _at the top of the aisle, in front of the altar. The pews either side were full of people but there was no priest on the dais, so this couldn't be an evening mass, and besides who had an evening mass behind a _coffin…?_ This had to be a vigil, and the person in the coffin had to be getting buried the following day…

It was such a small coffin. L couldn't resist creeping slightly closer at the realisation, ascending the steps so he stood half-in, half-out the church door. It was such a small casket, it had to be holding an extremely small adult, or a child – and judging by the dimensions, it would have to be a child approximately L's age.

L clung to the door, a little numbed by the revelation. He knew children could die – it wasn't so hard in such a world they lived in. People of all ages died all the time, whether it be by accident, nature or design, but to think of the death of a child…

A man suddenly rose from where he was sitting in the pews, and L took a half-step back again, trying to remain hidden.

"Quillsh…" A younger woman touched the rising man's arm, her voice sounding through the otherwise silent church. The bells overhead had finally stopped. The man bowed his head to speak in her ear, and after a few moments the woman released him. "…I understand. Goodnight then, and…thank you for coming. You were…a great comfort." She smiled weakly when 'Quillsh' squeezed her shoulder, bowing her head again when the elderly man vacated the pew and began walking down the aisle. L hastily scampered back out into the rain, and tried to hide behind an ornamental pillar at the entrance.

'Quillsh' left the church slowly, pausing at the entrance to remove an umbrella from the briefcase he carried in one hand, putting the spiky contraption up before descending the stairs into the lashing rain. He was an old man – not _really, _really old, but old enough to be counted out of the 'middle-aged' category and into the 'elderly' -, dressed in a smart – noticeably _black _– suit. His features were grave, probably as a result from the environment he'd just stepped from, but L had the feeling the man's expression would be hard to read even in a lighter situation. His appearance was very much 'old English gentleman', the black umbrella and briefcase only adding to the overall effect.

L sneezed.

The man he was watching paused. "…Hello?" The umbrella was tilted backwards, inquisitive eyes looking out from underneath and alighting upon the half-hidden drowned rat that was L. "…Are you alright?" He approached the boy. "You're soaking wet…where are your parents?" His voice was kind. "Are you lost?"

L shook his head. "I thank you for your concern sir, but I'm not lost." The boy glanced up at the church beside them, expression almost wistful as he studied the golden light seeping out from within. "I just don't know exactly where I am."

"Do you know where your parents are?"

"Dead, and assumed dead."

"The explosions today…?" A delicate question.

L shook his head again. "I've been an orphan for a few years."

"…Your guardian then?"

"I ran away from her."

"Why?" L was silent. "Do you plan on going back to her?"

"Eventually." A slight shrug, L pushing a sodden black bang back off of his face.

'Quillsh' crouched down, so he was on eye-level with the child. "What's your name, boy?"

"Lumière." The lie flowed smoothly off of L's lips. "And yours?"

"Quillsh. Quillsh Wammy."

L extended his hand then, for once courteous. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Most people would have laughed at the bedraggled eight year-old child extending his hand in the middle of a rainstorm to someone who had to be at least eight times his age with the presumption he was going to be received as an equal. Most people would have laughed, and mocked the boy for his large vocabulary, his strange actions.

Wammy didn't laugh. Instead, he carefully placed his briefcase on the ground beside him, switching his umbrella to his left hand so he could grip L's hand with his right, dwarfing pale fingers with his calloused own.

"The pleasure's all mine."

* * *

**Shadow: **On L's alias: x3. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

…And Compy, I wish you the best of fangirling fun whenever you get back from your convention-party-thing and find the mention of Wammy you hounded me for in your inbox.

* * *

"_Parleley, parlelellyleloooo, par le nee, partner, par... snip, parsley..."_

"_Parley?"_

"That's_ the one. Parley. Parley."_

"_Parley? Damn to the _depths_ whatever man what thought of '_Parley'_."  
"…That would be the French."_


	3. The Kelpie's Tricks

**Shadow: **I have such a headache…I've been typing this update for the better part of today, and metaphorically kicking my writer's block down somewhere about three am this morning. (Seriously – best time of the day to write, especially when you have a mug of hot chocolate beside you. Don't forget to go to bed though, because the birds singing about five-six make a terrible racket.)

_**Note:**_ I got _Another Note_! (Some time ago actually, but shh.) And I have a Death Note of my very own – sadly, it doesn't kill anyone when you write their names inside but…hey, we can all dream, right?

…Yes, the title of this chapter is an inside joke.

* * *

**Ashes to Ashes**

**3. **_**The Kelpie's Tricks**_

_The kelpie is a water-horse who haunts the rivers and streams of the north, a tricky spirit that loves to play mischief and ensnare others in dark riddles and dangerous games. _

_Kelpies are not meek or friendly, much contrary to their docile appearance. They fool others into trusting them, into riding their backs, and then plunge into the waters and foam and hold their riders down until they drown. _

_Never trust a kelpie, and never ride the water-horse. _

* * *

'Lumière', Quillsh Wammy had quickly come to realise, was a strange little boy. Quite aside from their odd little introduction in the rain, Lumière had somehow or other managed to ingrain himself so upon Wammy's interest in the space of less than ten minutes that the elderly gentleman found himself taking the child to his mansion of a home on the outskirts of Winchester, instead of to the local police station. With all his pretty arguments from his silver tongue Lumière had somehow disabled every case Wammy had presented for having L placed within the care of the police until his guardian could be summoned, and the inventor was at a loss as to how he had been so effectively talked down by an eight year-old.

"_This is your home?" _The child had looked slightly taken-aback by the sheer _size _of Quillsh's house, standing dripping water on the floor of the immense entrance foyer.

"_It is one of my many homes, yes."_ Wammy had four mansions, three houses and a range of apartments about the globe in his name and the names of his aliases; the selection allowing him to come and go as he pleased about the world to do his business.

"_It's big," _Lumière had been blunt; something Wammy was beginning to realise was customary for the child, _"_too_ big for one person. Even if that person fills his house with his inventions."_

Wammy didn't question how the child had known he was an inventor. _"I have a live-in housekeeper and cook."_

Lumière had insisted upon being taken to meet her.

The housekeeper/cook _loved _him_._ Adored him even, cooing over the little boy with big eyes, dark hair and porcelain-pale skin. She scolded Quillsh for letting the child remain wet and drip all over the floor, and sent the man out of the kitchen where she was working into the main of the house to fetch a towel. While Wammy was gone L suddenly found himself presented with a giant mug of hot chocolate and a pile of strawberry jam tarts, and by the time Wammy had come back the mug was half-drained, the pile had vanished, and L's mouth and hands were sticky with red. So commenced the long and arduous operation to clean the boy up, the boy stripped of his soggy shirt and dungarees and placed in a too-large spare t-shirt, wrapped in an enormous blue towel that trailed the ground as he shuffled along the floor. Black eyes, bright from sugar, peeped out from over the top of this elaborate wrapping, fluffy hair perched above them slowly drying due to the heat inside the mansion.

Lumière, Quillsh Wammy soon found out, was insatiably curious. Trying to find some way of entertaining the boy Quillsh had taken the child to see his workroom, opening the door to the proverbial cave of wonders and watching with mild amusement as his feather-haired smaller companion nearly tripped over his towel in his haste to enter. Everything within was studiously examined, poked at, made to spin and dance where viable, glittering in the light from the overhead lamp and casting rainbows on the floor. L ran from one thing to the next, clearly having fun.

"Don't break anything?" Quillsh still stood at the door, debating whether or not it was alright to leave the boy in his workroom while he went elsewhere and tried to find out where the child had come from. His vague worry seemed unnecessary however – Lumière handled everything he touched delicately, carefully, holding items by his minute fingertips and solving the various puzzles Wammy had made that were scattered about the room.

The child looked up at him for a few seconds, gaze clear, honest, and solemn. He then went back to solving the massive 3D jigsaw Quillsh kept in the corner, deeply engrossed in fitting the pieces together.

Wammy quietly withdrew, and left him to it.

* * *

They ate together in the warm little kitchen, L managing a little of the chicken he was plied with before becoming distracted by the bowl of sugar cubes – honestly, who had _sugar cubes ­_anymore? They were so archaic -, taking them out and stacking them up into a glittering castle upon the tabletop. Quillsh let him play, eating his own food, thinking.

He hadn't found anything about a missing boy named Lumière in the system, but that might have been mostly because the system was currently in a shambles due to the local police station having been blown up that morning, and the subsequent explosions around the city after that. Wammy's intellect had allowed him to come up with an invention easily capable of hacking into practically any easy-to-medium-strength-protected database he came across, but still…no Lumière, no mention of a lost black-haired genius boy – and a genius the little Lumière was! Every puzzle within Wammy's workroom had been solved by the time the inventor had returned to check on his young guest an hour later: - the 3D puzzle, a magnificent miniature rendition of the Eiffel tower in France; a large god-knows-how-many-pieces jigsaw that was at least a metre long by half that wide; a massive Rubix cube Wammy entertained himself with on random occasions (that he'd never managed to solve, as it was nine-by-nine instead of three-by-three) – and the boy had even _made _some entertainment for himself when the preset things were done, building a tower of pencils that had to defy at least one law of physics and, in mimicry of the same sort of thing lying about the room, drawing up some blueprints for…what appeared to be an improvement to Quillsh's computer's security.

Oh my.

No eight year-old should be able to –

But this eight year-old had and _was –_

"So tell me, Lumière-with-no-last-name," Quillsh broke out of his internal musing, addressing his question to the busy little boy seated opposite him, "when do you plan to return to your guardian?"

"Care-worker." L corrected, not looking at the man. "Care-worker_s, _if you wish to be even more specific." His sugar-cube castle was at such a height he was now standing on his chair to continue building it.

"Why did you run away from them?"

"I walked."

"Why did you walk away, then?"

"The bells were ringing." L looked up then, a glance of life from beneath his ebony hair. "The bells were ringing; I followed them and found you. Who were they ringing for?" The sugar palace gleamed before him.

Quillsh debated lying, but it wasn't really worth it. "A little boy I knew. A friend's son."

L observed Wammy silently for a few moments, before calmly stating: "He was like a grandson to you."

"…Yes."

"Talking about this so soon after the vigil upsets you." Wammy noticed the child before him had a habit of speaking certain observations aloud, as if clarifying them with himself. "I am sorry for distressing you."

There was another long pause, in which the old man looked at him contemplatively. "No," he said eventually, meeting L's onyx-black eyes squarely, "you're not."

L paused his work for a few moments, looking at the man opposite him silently. Then, he went back to adding another tower to his creation.

"Why did you lie?" Wammy asked him curiously.

An affable shrug. "I thought that was what you wanted to hear."

"I'd prefer for you to tell me the truth, whatever that might be."

"Even when you may dislike it?" A gleam in L's eyes, a certain childish streak of sadism allowed rein.

His elderly companion nodded. "Always – and _only – _the truth, whether I like it or not."

The small head was tilted to one side, L considering the proposal. "…I'm still going to lie to you sometimes. It is physically impossible to tell the truth one hundred percent of the time."

"You have a penchant for stating the obvious at times, child."

"Sometimes things are more obvious to me than they are to other people." 'Lumière' finally finished his work; the castle of sugar cubes a majestic construction before him on the table. The lights overhead made the palace glitter, the background of the slim figure draped in a blanket complimenting the shimmering white nicely, the skyline behind the building. Twin onyx moons hung above, just as bright in their darkness as the sugar-castle's contrasting light, watching Quillsh. Calm. Assured.

This boy…

This _one _boy…

Who was he?

* * *

Josephine's guilt was an unending opera in her head, a screaming cacophony of sound and colour that plagued her every waking minute. And she couldn't sleep.

The care-worker's frame was rigid as she lay on a narrow cot in the nurse's room back at _Close Haven, _the matron herself watching her shrewdly over from her seat by the desk. Josephine was forbidden to rise – the nurse wasn't letting her go until some of the stress had faded, until she looked less like she was on the verge of collapse but –

"This is _ridiculous!" _Josephine sat up on the cot, her temper suddenly rising once more. A vicious headache pounded away at her temples, but she shoved it from her mind. "Lawliet is still out there, in that god-forsaken city and I-!"

"You are here." The nurse rose once more, looking ready to push down the recalcitrant younger woman if necessary. "You did your job, Josephine and -"

"I _lost a child! _How is _that _'doing my job'?!" Josephine's remorse, and her anger at herself, swirled together violently, a maelstrom of hurt and shame. "I should be back in Winchester, looking for him, not stuck here being mollycoddled-! Let me _go – _it's my fault he left in this first place and-"

"Josephine, you can do _no-one _any good in your current state." She was rebuked. "The quicker you rest and are recharged the quicker I am likely to feel safe enough in discharging you – please, try to sleep. You've had a long, stressful, _traumatising_ day; you need to relax now. You _can _relax now; all is well here; the children are safe."

"All but L…" Slowly, Josephine swung her legs back up onto the cot, lying down on her side with her eyes fixed unerringly on the nurse. "He's not here."

"That doesn't mean the boy isn't safe." The elder woman tried to offer comfort. "He'll be _fine_, Josephine. L is a smart child, and a resourceful one."

Josephine gave a low, bitter laugh at that, but what exactly she was mocking was unsure. Her eyes closed and she tried to even out her breath, tried to ignore the pain in her head and her heart. In the darkness behind her eyelids her own private performance continued unchecked, the backlight of fire and death, the silhouette of the precocious L standing untouched amongst the carnage, unmoved, analytical. The unreadable child with dark eyes that vanished into the fire and chaos of Winchester, elusive as smoke. Nothing but ash in the hand and the heart and the lungs, sometimes so hard to trace but always – _always – _there, blowing in the eddies of the wind.

Josephine didn't sleep. She couldn't.

* * *

It was the murmuring that woke him up. Tired, Quillsh Wammy had seen his young houseguest to bed in one of the many guestrooms in the house, ushering Lumieré into said room and offering the child an over-large t-shirt to use as nightwear. The boy had taken him up on his offer (surprisingly too – Wammy had been expecting the boy to reject the suggestion and insist he was going to sleep in his soot-streaked dungarees), and was soon dressed, and ready for bed. Undoubtedly the shirt was far too big for the child, the hem trailing the ground at the back and drowning the waif-like figure within, but Lumieré plucked at it only once when Quillsh voiced his resignation at the lack of anything closer to the boy's size, Lumieré scolding Wammy for his pessimism and assuring the elderly gentleman the t-shirt was more than adequate as a piece of clothing. And then Wammy had gone to bed himself. And then the murmuring had woken him up.

Dressing gown on Wammy had descended the grand staircase in his house, trailing one hand down the banister for support in the darkness. His eyes weren't as good as they used to be and it was far too late – or early, depending on how one looked at it – to be switching lights on willy-nilly. And yet, reaching the foyer, with the many corridors and rooms branching off of it, Wammy could see there was light already, a flickering white glare that slid out from a crack between the door and jamb of the entrance to his main sitting-room. With the glare came the noise, the ceaseless mutterings and mumblings of varying tones and pitch, a babble of voices too far away and too confused to pick out individual words.

Quillsh pushed open the door, the wood swinging into the room silently on well-oiled hinges and revealing a scene that had Wammy blinking in somewhat-sleepy surprise.

The white glare came from the flickering light of four TVs, one on its stand where it belonged in the room and the other three – according to the deep furrows in the carpet – looking like they'd been dragged through from other rooms. Wires haphazardly trailed the floor, criss-crossing here and there before finishing at a full extension cord attached to the mains supply. All the TVs were set to different news channels, serious-faced reporters and anchors looking out from behind their desks or in front of ravaged-looking ruins. _Winchester. _Their voices overlapped and ran into a wall of incomprehensibility – Wammy couldn't distinguish the individuals lost in the jumble of noise.

Wammy cut over the babble, his own weary voice startling in the near-darkness. "You know it's dangerous to place too many plugs at an extension from one socket?"

There was a shift in the shadows, a pile of blankets heaped before the televisions stirring, the light from the screens picking out glossy black hair, liquid eyes of darkness beneath the shadows of the fringe, the curve of the pale skin. Lumieré – silent, thoughtful, strange.

Quillsh tried again, coming further inside the room and addressing the boy. "Child, couldn't you sleep?"

One small hand uncurled from its hiding place under the warm blanket to point unerringly at the brightest of the four screens before its owner, where a bold yellow title proclaimed _'Breaking News'. _"They blew up the hospital at midnight." Black orbs never broke eye contact with Wammy.

The elderly man hesitated, looking at the boy – and then Quillsh sighed, already turning about and heading for the kitchen. "I'll go get us some hot chocolate, shall I?"

* * *

As the morning light crept through the cracks of the living-room's curtains Quillsh Wammy ruefully rubbed at his eyes, slightly wistful at the many hours of precious sleep he'd given up to his peculiar houseguest. Little Lumieré had been active most of the dark hours, drinking the hot chocolate brought to him by the elder gentleman, watching the television with dark eyes, talking when prompted about psychology and criminality and other terms that vaguely flummoxed Wammy. Lumieré had an adult's vocabulary, and the mind of a prodigy. Wammy had never…he'd lived a long life already, but never had he met someone quite like the little boy curled up in his nest of blankets beside him on the ground. At about four am the child had stopped talking and then suddenly dropped, mid-sentence, fast asleep before he'd even hit the floor. The boy's energy had been clearly spent, the whole affair reminiscent of children half Lumieré's supposed age. His own children had -

At half-six, when the images on the switched-to-silent televisions changed from the scenes of the ravaged cathedral, guild and hospital to the smoking heap of Winchester Castle, he woke Lumieré up again, the boy blinking at him rather blearily for a few milliseconds before becoming totally alert, sleep-mussed hair pushed back off a young face as the boy directed his whole attention to the four sets before him. Wammy got up and left the room after opening the curtains to make some breakfast – it was too early to expect his housekeeper to be up. Behind Quillsh, the murmuring babble of the night before started up once more.

* * *

"You don't work in law enforcement."

"That is correct."

"You don't work for the government."

"That is also correct."

"Then this system," and here Lumieré actually removed the thumb from his lips that he'd speaking around for the past twenty minutes, waving a small hand at the computer in Wammy's workroom, "is completely illegal."

"Just so," and Quillsh smiled.

"Mr. Wammy, sir," the hand dropped, and the child spoke with a straight poker face any seasoned gambler would kill for, "I do believe you are an extraordinarily bad example on my impressionable young mind."

"And you, child," was the elder male's response, gently ushering the boy into the seat before the main monitor, "are absolutely loving every second of it, aren't you?" Lumieré only looked at him from quickly from the side, dark eyes gleaming entirely too wickedly for an eight year-old boy. "Come," Wammy reached over to switch the computer on, "don't you have some files to look at?"

"Do you think they'll have pictures already?" The question came off as innocent; L perched on the very edge of the slightly-too-high computer chair, swinging his legs back and forth, back and forth. "Pictures would be helpful." He sounded like he was inquiring about a children's storybook.

"Probably," Quillsh put in his string of passwords, well aware of the little boy beside him tracking every keystroke with his sharp gaze, "the first explosions were yesterday." He hesitated for a moment, conscience pricking him slightly. Lumieré was young, and the bombings catastrophic, and to inflict such gruesome sights upon a child –

"You needn't worry about me;" L was quick to pick up on what caused his companion to pause, accustomed to his age giving others problems. "Mr. Wammy should know I have seen worse things than a few blown-up buildings."

"Dead people? People maimed, injured and screaming in agony?"

The answer was simple: "Yes."

Quillsh was silent for a few moments, opening the system and going in to draw up the files they wanted. The clicks of the mouse and the tap of the keyboard's keys seemed suddenly more solemn than before, the tick of time marching ever onwards. "…Why am I doing this for you?" He questioned finally, somewhat resignedly. "Gruesome interest aside, why do you want to see these files?"

"I like puzzles," was the immediate response from the dark-eyed Lumieré, "and I'm bored."

Quillsh – despite himself - let him see the files.

* * *

The bells rang sweetly through the air, even though they cut through smoke and ash and death, and an ancient city deep in fear and mourning. The bells rang out as they'd always done, day following day, month following month, year following year. Noon following night, the bells rang out over Winchester, singing out through coronations, births, deaths and war.

"They sound different today," L remarked softly, wrapped up in some other child's coat, his own –clean - dungarees beneath. His hand was gloved in some other child's glove, lost in Wammy's larger grip. "The Cathedral bells aren't ringing." The boy hadn't asked where the coat and gloves had come from, accepting them silently from Wammy's housekeeper and cook with a solemn nod. (One didn't ask why childless adults had children's clothes, especially not when they were obviously so new.)

"You can tell that?" Quillsh looked down at the small boy walking beside him on their way to the hospital, feeling the fragile hand in his grasp, brittle bones that could all too easily snap if he applied any real pressure. The weak January sun shone down on them through the smoke hanging over the city, the thick taste of charcoal on the air spelling something sick, something special, the birth of something new.

"The bells all sound different," L replied.

"And you can tell the difference?"

L looked at his companion rather blankly. "Mr. Wammy, I've been in Winchester barely a day, and I have had more distracting thoughts to occupy my mind with than the sounds of the city's many bells."

"But you knew the Cathedral's -"

"The Cathedral's bells can't ring if the building itself is blown up, sir." L's wide-eyed, faux-innocent expression spoke volumes for the 'well, _obviously' _thoughts that had to be going on in his head. "I would've thought the fact an apparent one." Quillsh fell silent at that for a few moments, the elder man clearly somewhat embarrassed at having missed something so obvious, so L took – a rare – pity on him. "…I assume you know all the bells' different voices?"

Wammy nodded, slowly becoming properly accustomed to being out-thought by his little companion. "I do. They all have their own voice, their own message that mingles with the other to tell their tale -"

"Like in 'Oranges and lemons'?" Genius or not, L was still an eight year-old boy, and knew the playground nursery rhymes as well as any other prepubescent. "It's not as if London's all that far away."

'_Oranges and lemons,' says the bells of St. Clement's._

'_You owe me five farthings,' says the bells of St. Martin's._

"It's a good comparison." Quillsh agreed. "Though I never did understand why that rhyme always began with a reference to fruit."

'_When will you pay me?' say the bells of Old Bailey._

'_When I am rich,' says the bells of Shoreditch._

"Because it sounds like the noise the bells of Saint Clement's are supposed to make, I have heard…" L looked ahead, a quiet thought pricking at the back of his mind, his quick two steps matching Quillsh's larger stride as they walked along together.

'_When will that be?' say the bells of Stepney._

'_I do not know,' says the great bell of Bow. _

L's hand tightened on his companion's for a moment, his dark eyes serious as he suddenly stopped and looked up at Wammy, the man stopping as well and looking down. "The package that was sent to the police station at six am yesterday…the one which exploded – that had citrus fruits in it, didn't it?" The boy probably already knew, having poured over all the news throughout the night, but confirmation never hurt.

"…Yes."

_Here comes a lantern to guide you to bed;_

_Here comes the chopper to chop off your head!_

Someone had sent oranges and lemons to the police station, and six hours later the Cathedral had been blown up…only an _idiot _would think it was a coincidence. The package sent to the police station pointed the way to the Cathedral, but what would be the point in sending the package alone? Two bombings within the same day would've provided the link regardless of the package's arrival, and so the package had to mean something, had to establish some sort of pattern, a message the bomber had left behind for – what? They wanted attention? The sort of people who committed such acts of extreme violence and left messages behind wanted to be noticed, hated, loved, reviled. They wanted attention, redress for some grievance that had been done against them, or against someone or something they loved and/or believed in. Their message had to be consistent, their trail there to follow could only people find it, and so…

There should've been something odd at the Cathedral, something noticeable, left behind by the bomber for others to find. L, standing amidst the still-smoking ruins, had seen nothing, looking around him at ash, blood and death. Human suffering had been the main concern, the shriek of the ambulance, the cries of the wounded. L, like everyone else who still had a beating heart within the Cathedral at the time, had been preoccupied with fleeting mortality, and not the deranged psychology of a bomber's mind. And yet, he'd still been thinking, thinking, _thinking, _and then – those…those dolls…

L's free hand went to his pocket then as they resumed walking, to the place where he'd put the dolls the day before. Through a layer of denim he felt them, three individual lumps that Wammy's housekeeper – her name was Hannah incidentally, he'd discovered this when she'd offered him the coat – had obviously not removed before putting the clothing in the washing machine.

The dolls were not a regular piece of the Cathedral's architecture, so logic held that someone had put them in the font he'd plucked them from. That the little paper boat the dolls had been floating in hadn't become soggy and sunk in the water meant that the boat hadn't been in the water that long. That the little paper boat had still been floating there so it had the _opportunity _to get soggy meant that it had been placed in the water _after _the tour guide had passed by on their rounds around the building – had it been placed there before, no doubt the anal caretakers would've called the thing insulting and swept it, dripping, away and out of sight. Therefore, the dolls, in their boat, had been put into the water font sometime after the tour guide had passed on their round – which was at regular intervals -, sometime before the explosion. And since Dora had been going to grab the next tour available for the orphanage's children –

The dolls had probably, with about sixty percent surety, been placed just prior to bomb's detonation in the Cathedral, which meant it was highly likely that the one who had planted the dolls in the font and the one behind the explosion were linked. Which, in turn, made it highly likely that the dolls were the second message in the series of bombings, and that they somehow led to the scene of the third explosion – the guildhall. Which meant –

"Lumieré?" Wammy called softly to the boy beside him, seeing the child was lost in his thoughts. They'd arrived at their destination, at the main hospital, part of the establishment still smoking. The other parts – the ones that remained undamaged – still held patients, the other hospitals around the city already packed full from all the explosions. "Lumieré, we're here." L glanced up; gaze refocusing itself, giving a quick nod so the two could proceed on forwards into pandemonium.

The place was utter chaos. Policemen milled about, trying vainly to ward off the concerned public, to field questions _and _conduct an investigation at the same time. Firemen and emergency workers were going through the rubble, searching for survivors, corpses piling up at the side being hastily covered with sheets by nurses. Doctors and nurses were attending to the injured, the dying, the regular wards, and one poor receptionist was trying to direct concerned people the right way and not go completely insane as she tried to be of general assistance.

In the tangle, L let go of Wammy's hand. He'd only held on to it because the man had insisted; claiming that this way Lumieré could pass for his grandson or something. L had acquiesced to the request – not because he actually agreed with Quillsh, no; he could've passed for the man's grandson whether they had held hands or not; but because the man had been kind to him, polite and truthful, and L had seen some of the photographs in the man's home, the older man, the little dark-haired boy who was no longer around. (Because they'd buried him, hadn't they, the day before in the rain?)

L let go of Wammy's hand, and wound his own way through bedlam with a calmness to belie his youth. Everyone was far too busy to query why such a young child was wandering around alone, and so L wandered at his own leisure, eavesdropping on interesting-sounding conversation in the hopes of overhearing something useful. He'd told Quillsh he wanted to go to the hospital to see if his care-worker was there, so he could check on her and find some way of getting home, but that had been a lie. True, Dora would probably still be around, but L had a different mission in mind. People were more inclined to come out with some of the most dear pieces of information when they thought no-one outside their inner circle could overhear them, and to most adults, an unknown child was as good as nobody being there at all. (Nobody ever suspected, or thought much of, a child.)

"Are you lost?" It was a patient that finally asked L the question, a young woman whose torso was completely bound up with bandages as she lay on her bed, a pained smile on her face.

L ignored her for a few moments, but the woman repeated the question, and L couldn't avoid answering without attracting undue attention to himself. So, he looked at her, and very deliberately shook his head.

"Looking for someone?"

A nod.

"A patient?"

Another nod.

"From the bombings?"

A third, and final nod, and L decided to play cute and innocent. "She's called Dora, do you know her?"

"I'm afraid I don't know any Doras…" the bandaged woman looked regretful for a few moments, but then she turned her head to the right, to the curtain dividing the beds, and spoke. "Shea, have you heard of any Doras?"

One pale hand clutched at the curtain, drawing it back, another woman revealed there. She had dark hair, bright eyes, her right arm bound up in a sling. Otherwise, she was dressed normally, as if she were going.

"No," Shea's reply was short, her gaze a little vague as she looked at L – painkillers? "I'm afraid I don't. I've been discharged though…I could probably help you look for her?"

"I don't think that would be a very good idea," the other patient said doubtfully. "Shea, you look so drugged up it'll be a wonder if you can keep upright when you try to stand never mind you off wandering around on a mission."

"Are you left-handed?" L asked the wobbly Shea curiously, sharp eyes following how the woman stumbled to her feet, using her only free hand to support her.

"Thankfully, yes." Shea smiled tightly, standing. "Life would be a little difficult for the next eight weeks or so were I not."

"They say left-handed people are twins," L continued in his usual blasé way, overlooking how his conversational partner swayed, and how the other woman in their trio looked worriedly on.

Shea shook her head. "I'm an only child."

"Lumieré?" Quillsh Wammy, speaking from the doorway, having finally found his wandering charge. "Lumieré! _There _you are, child. Do you know how long I've been looking for you?"

"Mr. Wammy." L looked calmly back over his shoulder at the man, unconcerned for the other's harried expression. "I was wondering when you'd find me." He turned back to the two women he'd been conversing with. "Thank you for your help; I'll be okay from now on."

The two waved goodbye to him as Wammy and he left the room, diving headfirst back into the hospital's chaos. Nothing much had improved during the short interim L had been talking, people still as overworked, still as stressed, still as hopeless and helpless as before.

L saw Dora. She lay, bandaged, on a bed in one of the wards they passed, fast asleep. A man was holding her hand, keeping vigil – her husband? Her brother? L didn't know, didn't _care _to know, and yet he was too fixated for a little too long all the same, because Quillsh noticed his distraction and stopped.

"Have you seen someone you recognise?"

L feigned confusion. "Hm?" (He didn't think Wammy bought it.) "My thoughts were somewhere else, I apologise. What did you ask?"

Wammy, obligingly, repeated the question. "Have you seen someone you recognise?"

"No." L's lie was a simple one. "I was staring into the distance."

They walked on, leaving the sleeping Dora behind. There was a new future ahead.

* * *

L, young as he was, felt that he could easily devote his life forever to one woman alone if she were so wonderful a chef, and so generous a person, as Hannah. Wammy's housekeeper seemed to have taken it upon herself to be the sole fulfiller of all L's sugar-infested dreams. Quillsh's home in Winchester was filled with the smells of sweet desserts, L himself having long since followed his nose and taken root at the kitchen table to be a 'tester' for all of Hannah's delightful creations. The woman spoilt him completely, and it was a certain glee (and a slice of cake in each hand) that L poured over the photographs he'd had Wammy print him out of the police files, searching for something odd, something out of place, in each one. The dolls, having lived in his pocket for far too long, were laid out beside the images, bound, sawdust-filled cotton looking very weary and worn against the wood grain.

The stripes on their aprons were fading, and the hand-drawn faces had been obliterated completely by the wonders of washing powder. The little pictures looked somewhat worse the wear for having gone through the wash – squinting, L could just about make out the outlines of…what looked like a cooked chicken drumstick on the first, a candle on the second, and…a…lump of – wait, no, it was a loaf. So – meat, bread and a candle.

…That made absolutely no sense.

L puzzled over the pictures, attempted to fit the new information in alongside the rhyme of _oranges and lemons, _but couldn't quite mesh them all. There was something…still something off. Still something –

"Making yourself at home, child?" Wammy, like L before him, had followed the scent of baking to the kitchen, helping himself to a slice of some of Hannah's cake. "Is the food good?" L looked up at him, mouth stuffed full of food like a hamster, and nodded his head furiously. "You seem to be settling in here well, regardless of the fact I'm meant to be taking you back to your home."

L swallowed his mouthful before giving the elder gentleman a decidedly catlike smile. "Doesn't Mr. Wammy have to find out where exactly that home _is _first before he can take me there?"

Quillsh took a seat at the table. "I don't suppose you're going to make my job any easier and just _tell _me, are you?" His companion shook his head. "Thought not. Are you not going to tell me your real name either?"

L looked at him, a little curious. "Why do you not think Lumieré is my real name?"

"Just a hunch, child." Wammy took a bite of his cake. "Members of the human race happen to have them every so often."

The boy beside him made a sound that was an exceedingly close approximation to laughter, quickly silenced, glittering amusement hanging behind in dark, dark eyes. "Does Mr. Wammy want rid of me?"

From any other child the question would've been a poignant one, a pointed cry out for attention, for the adult being interrogated to emphatically claim the negative at once. From L…Quillsh Wammy felt he was being humoured.

"Child," the man reached out, brushing some of the boy's raven hair out of his face, a fond gesture that L regarded and received with some mild bemusement, "I have the feeling even if I had wanted you gone I'd have no choice in the matter. You strike me as an exceedingly hard person to get rid of."

L smiled, properly, a child's smile, but his knowing eyes rivalled that of the Cheshire Cat. Quillsh Wammy, it appeared, was a good judge of character.

**

* * *

**

**Shadow:** _Oranges and lemons _is a nursery rhyme about the different bells of London. The sing-song intonation of the words is supposed to sound like the ringing of the bells._**

* * *

**_

_And with this candle... I will light your mother's dress on fire._


End file.
